


The Best Laid Plans

by artifactstorageroom3_archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-04
Updated: 2009-05-04
Packaged: 2019-06-13 03:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artifactstorageroom3_archivist/pseuds/artifactstorageroom3_archivist
Summary: Connor takes Blair on a charity auction date, and Jim isn't too happy about it.





	The Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Elaine, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Artifact Storage Room 3](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Artifact_Storage_Room_3) and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Artifact Storage Room 3’s collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/artifactstorageroom3/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> This was written in response to sentinel_thurs challenge #285 “It’s for Charity”
> 
> This is NOT a partner betrayal fic.

 

“It’s for charity. It’s for charity. There is nothing going on,” Jim sternly reminded himself as he looked for the fifth time at the clock. Blair was fifteen minutes late already. His big dinner with Connor should’ve been over, and the short, annoying anthropologist should’ve been home by now.

“Charity is overrated,” Jim groused to himself as he, at the moment, had nobody else to complain at.

He let another fifteen minutes pass before picking up the phone.

“Hello?” Blair’s voice came fuzzily through the speaker along with the sound of a crowd in the background.

“Sandburg, where the hell are you?” Jim heard himself say in his very best I-am-pissed-and-interrogating-you tone.

“Out with Connor man, you know that. Charity date remember?”

“You were supposed to be home half an hour ago, Chief.  Her time is up,” Jim snapped.

“Umm, okay, well I’m going to hang up now and pretend you didn’t call me. Bye Jim,” was Blair’s testy reply before the distinct sound of silence indicated that he’d hung up his phone.

Jim retaliated by throwing his own phone across the room.

“Damn Megan Connor anyway,” he growled as he stalked to the kitchen. 

It wasn’t her fault that the attendant had put her name down on the silent bidding slip when she was placing Jim’s bid for him because he couldn’t make it down to Rainier to place it himself. It was, however, her fault that she hadn’t been any too quick to point out the mistake to Sandburg. Not that Jim could blame her for that when the young professor had been so clearly thrilled with the amount of her bid and had been thanking her so profusely.

All she had done to rectify the situation was halfheartedly offer to pay Jim back, and she hadn’t even done that yet. Of all things she seemed to think that Jim should be grateful that she was purporting this ruse. All of which left Jim without much spare cash until his next paycheck, and a week and a half full of the misery of Blair singing the praises of Megan Connor and her generous pocket book. 

And what was Jim supposed to do about it anyway? It had seemed childish to point out that it wasn’t her idea, her bid, or her money – especially when Blair seemed so delighted with the idea of spending a night out on the town with her. God knew they were probably fucking their little well coiffed heads off while Jim stood there in his kitchen miserable and lonely.

Goddamn Sandburg and his hormones. Goddamn Megan and her one-upping mentality. Blair was just going to be some notch in her bedpost or maybe she would be one in his or maybe they’d both end up notching somebody else’s bedposts because they couldn’t make it back to…

Jim threw his freshly opened beer in the general direction of the now broken phone.

Fate being what it was in Jim’s life, Blair pushed the door open just in time to view the explosion of amber glass and foam.

“You weren’t kidding when you said he was testy, Sandy,” Connor’s voice grated past Jim’s eardrums.

Angrily, the tall cop stalked over to his front door and pushed himself between his partner and his date. Imperiously, he held his palm out to her.

“I hate to do this to you Connor, but I need that money back now,” Jim said with the false sincerity that he’d heard his father use on hundreds of poor schleps that had made the mistake of trying to pull a fast one on the elder Ellison.

“Jimbo, I don’t exactly have that kind of cash,” Megan blushed sincerely as she tried to glance meaningfully in Blair’s direction.

“Jim, man, if you lent Megan some money…”

“No, no Chief, not lent. Took. As in she took my money without asking, and I’d like it back now. She had a nice night, didn’t she? The food was good? The company was agreeable? I mean, I hope that she at least got a nice steak out of the deal seems how I didn’t even get the offer to go to my own dinner. So I think that it’s only fair she pay me back as soon as possible, don’t you?”

Blair looked confused for half a second before he turned to Connor, “You didn’t tell me that you borrowed the money from Jim for the night.”

“ _Took_ , Sandburg, you seem to be missing that part,” Jim hissed in frustration.

“What Jim means to say, Sandy, is that I originally went to the auction to place a bid on his behalf,” Megan tried to soothe while attempting to shoot significant glances in Jim’s direction.

What  significance they were supposed to have, Jim wasn’t sure. 

“No, what ‘Jim’ means to say is that I bid on your little charity auction, I paid for it, and they put Connor’s name down by mistake. Instead of rectifying the mistake, she took over my date without my permission and has been basking in your thankfulness when all she did was steal it all from me,” Jim spat out in an icy tone. It was… melodramatic of him.

“Oh for… you were obviously just bidding to save him from a night out with those other pathetic people that were there, or to keep him out of trouble. I was doing you a favor you ungrateful oaf,” Megan spat as her temper finally reasserted itself.

“YOU!” Jim turned his palm over and pointed at her, “You horned in on an evening I’d been planning for months. Do you think that they put the attractive professors with the nice restaurants in those packages? Do you know how many secretaries I sent flowers and chocolates to so that they’d mix up Blair’s name with Professor Harrison’s on the auction bill? Sandburg has wanted to go there since they opened.”

“You actually wanted to go?” Megan sounded like she couldn’t quite believe that.

“Of course I wanted to go, but the whole department knew about you and your little charitable donation the next day. I couldn’t exactly stand up and call you a big, fat liar in front of the entire bullpen, now could I?” 

A restraining hand was suddenly placed in the middle of Jim’s chest.

“Jim, go calm down,” Blair whispered softly.

Jim glared at both of them before stalking off to stand out on the balcony.

“Sandy, I’m sorry. I thought I was saving you,” Megan tried to explain when Blair’s wounded eyes turned on her.

“I get that you didn’t want me to be hurt. You’re a good friend, but I could’ve been… I could’ve gone with Jim tonight.”

“I…”

“Just go home, Megan. We’ll see you on Monday,” Blair said wearily as he closed the door rather rudely in her face.

With a dragging step, he walked towards the glass doors of the balcony.

“Connor’s going to be mad at you for that,” Jim commented when Blair finally crossed the threshold.

“Yeah, probably. Not as mad as you’re going to be when I tell you that there was no way that the name on the bid was a mistake. The bidders fill out the forms themselves man. She put her own name down.”

Jim’s face turned an interesting shade of red before he made himself grip the railing.

“In her defense, she was trying…”

“She was trying to drive us apart,” Jim ground out.

Blair laughed. “Oh, man, that is so not true. She’s just worried about me. She’s trying to protect me.”

“You need to be protected from me?”

“Nah, that’s not what I meant. She thinks that I need to be protected from myself. See thing is, I kind of… well. I have this tiny little crush on you, and I made the foolish mistake of telling her about it. Now, you know that I would never, ever doing anything about it, but Megan, she thinks that I’m just setting myself up for heartbreak. From her perspective, tonight would’ve been a disaster in the making.”

“Yeah, well her perspective was right,” Jim grumbled.

“So?” Blair prompted when Jim didn’t speak any further.

“So what?”

“So, I kind of just told you I have a thing for you. A response on that subject would be nice.”

“Oh well, I already knew that, Chief. Enhanced senses remember? Although, I have to admit that sometimes I don’t need them to see the, uh, evidence of your affections. You get happy to see me sometimes when you’re not quite awake. But, you also leak hormones like crazy around a lot of pretty girls too.”

“So you just, you weren’t ever going to bring that up? No harm no foul?” Blair asked incredulously.

Jim sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “Well, I tried to do something about it, but Connor felt the need to play knight in shining armor.”

“Hence the exploding bottle of beer on the wall?”

“Yeah, well the phone was there first,” Jim sheepishly admitted.

For some reason, that made Blair’s face light up.

“Really? You were that mad that you didn’t get to take me out to dinner?”

“No, I was that mad because I wanted to be the knight saving you from boring college sponsors. I wanted to be the one to take you to that nice restaurant you wanted to try. Dinner I can do daily if I want to,” Jim sulked.

“I don’t know. I’m not picturing you in a suit of armor here. Cape and mask maybe.”

“Villains wear those.”

“Oh? You think Zorro is a villain?”

“Zorro is a vigilante,” Jim corrected.

“Next you’ll be maligning Robin Hood,” Blair gasped in mock dismay.

“I’m an Ellison. It’s in my blood to criticize Robin Hood.”

Blair smiled slightly and then let his face sober. “You were seriously going to wine and dine me tonight?”

Jim sighed and turned to stare out over the city. “You’ve been living with me for three years now, Blair. I figured that it’s time that we piss or get off the pot. Friends, even best friends, don’t live together forever. I figure that if it doesn’t work out, then, well you’ll move out, and we fix things up like normal people do.”

“I guess that means this better work then, because we are the definition of abnormal,” Blair pointed out giddily.

“This doesn’t scare you at all, does it?”

“Losing you scared me, Jim. Seeing how your Sentinel abilities were betraying you with Alex, that scared me. This? This is nothing compared to that. In fact, it sort of bolsters my reasons for wanting it. I interviewed your wife, remember? I know who it was that wanted a divorce. You don’t walk away from your lovers; they walk away from you.”

“So you, I mean you wouldn’t object if I asked you out tomorrow night on a not-friends date?”

“I’d love to,” Blair replied instantly.

“It’ll be somewhere cheap. I bid a lot on your little dinner package,” Jim warned.

“Jim, I think the chance to impress me with your suaveness was lost when I saw you in plaid boxers and flip-flops. I’ll be happy if you take me to get hot dogs. Actually, given the phallic implications of…”

“Chief! Dating first, sex later. I’m not going to rush into anything and mess up our relationship,” Jim chided.

“You’re gonna make me wait? Can’t we count tonight as our first date? Then tomorrow would be our second,” Blair said fiendishly.

“If I let you use that logic, you’ll be backdating our entire relationship.”

“You’re only hurting yourself,” Blair averred.

Jim grabbed Blair’s hand and kissed the back of it. Smiling softly, he leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Suck it up, Chief. It’s for a good cause.”

 


End file.
